I’ll jump on this blog thingy not so much because I have pearls to share. I don’t. If you ask most people out there in digital ether land about blogs, they’ll cringe, at least that’s the impression I get. I do it to clear my throat.

Had a project some five years ago, something I thought was complete, and it was, ran roughly 45K words, a good size novella. The problem wasn’t length, or punctuation, or a zinger ending. It was the first two pages. Not only because those first two pages are what agents/editors/Mr. Smiths are going to judge your whole story on, your chance to sink a hook into them, but because, at least in my case, it’s not usually where the story begins. A mentor told me, “the voice is great, could read this voice all day, but you’re clearing your throat at the beginning. Just go!”

When I think about ‘hook them at the get-go,’ it stifles me, like all those shows that aired after The X-Files, using the insane, non-informative cold-open to catch your attention. Two minutes later, you’re in an office or kitchen or school, building the ‘normal’ state of a character’s life before you muck it all up. I guess what I’m saying is, writing a beginning, or even the start of a new chapter, is kind of like starting a car that’s been parked in a snowstorm for a day or two. It needs some warm-up. Caffeine helps too. That’s all I have to say about that.

Been reading a lot about what ‘tense is best.’ No such thing, I think. There’re comfort preferences, what most readers are used to, the tried and mostly true, sure. You can go back and ‘re-tense’ a whole thing ad-nauseum, which is a lot more work than just changing says to said or he/she to I, but really, it’s going to be what’s in your gut. Writers have instincts, like animals, which is to say, go with what’s churning in your head, what’s talking to you. If it hits, use it. Hell, if you want to stop halfway through a chapter and change tense or POV, and it makes so much sense to you, give it a whirl. No one is going to rap you on the knuckles for it. Then again, it might just come out shitty.

Thoughts on some horror/slashers I’ve been watching lately. Well, not so much about the films in particular, but the tropes: incompetent cops (which might just be a reflection of the real world) and oblivious adults/parents. None of it goes down the way it does if cops actually do their jobs and parents care more about their children than a bottle stashed in the drawer, or a date. Works if the body count racks up in a single day, sure, and our protag is running into them every which way but loose, is the last on the list, but a body count that stacks up over a week? A month? The suspension of disbelief that some dick or bobby isn’t putting the pieces together, some parent isn’t moving their whole family to Madagascar, the protags aren’t being drilled for answers in some smoky interrogation room, sucking up all the time they’d usually have to set a trap for baddie, is a stretch, even for escapism. Gonna work on flipping that, maybe.

What those kids did to that guy in The Burning? Unforgiveable, right? I wouldn’t say I was rooting for him, in his mangled form of course, but those kids definitely deserved what they got. Same goes for most slashers. The scary ones, though, they just happen, visit your open window or closed and deadbolted door for no reason at all. Regan becomes a meat puppet for Pazuzu because what? she played with a Ouija board and named her best friend Captain Howdy? That’s the stuff that lives under my skin. The ‘I’m going to irrevocably change your life in a bad way just because I can’ kind of thing.

Rediscovered this album I used to love, still do. Think I had about 4 CDs at the time, and this one got a lot of air time. Era wise, it’s a great addition to my WIP playlist. Not a bad cover either. Okay, throat cleared. Time to write.

Think I’m in sixth or seventh grade, with nothing much to do on the 4th of July, but I know someone’s got fireworks/crackers somewhere (works: legal, crackers: not). That somewhere happens to be at a relative’s house, Dennis, I’m pretty sure his name was, where the promise of lots of food and explosions was better than nothing, a notch above watching the tube till sunset, I guess.

Dennis had these three-foot high metal pipes, welded at one end to a plate, for stability, you know, lined across the driveway like anti-aircraft cannons. The food is good; I hold on to a sparkler too long and get finger-singed, then Dennis holds out a handful of these red sticks with firecrackers attached to one end. Oh, that’s a bottle-rocket, got it.

Just light it and drop it in the pipe.

At the time, I was used to those firework stands, the ‘city sanctioned’ ones that sell big family packs in shrink-wrap, supposed to be safe, even for kids, and more importantly, they’re legal, not a fire hazard (though it never fails that at least five brush-fire’s’ll break out up the street). Dennis, though, he’s grabbing those rockets from the trunk of his car.

I watch a toddler, then a kid still way younger than me flick a lighter like a pack-a-day smoker and drop it in the pipe. Fire in the hole!

Still pinching a sparkler, feeling the scream of that rocket sear my eardrums as it rises, then pops, a neon flower in full bloom, I think to myself: this is some wild shit (probably thought doo-doo, then), and I’m pretty sure Dennis–maybe the toddlers, too–is sloshed. The twin refrigerators outside have taps, you know, the ones for ice and water, connected to kegs of Burgie chilling inside (not sure I’ve ever seen Burgie outside the IE; think Blue Ribbon but easier on the wallet).

“Here,” he says, hands me a lighter and a rocket, he’s scruffy and sunburned, glossy-eyed, “I crushed it for you.”

‘Crushed it,’ I later found out, means putting the firecracker end on the curb and smashing it with a rock a few times, maybe to pack the powder more, who knows, but it does give a louder bang.

I lit that sucker, dropped it in, and felt like Rambo the rest of the night. Now Dennis, as the night went on, he started pinching those bottle-rockets by the red tip end like I’d been doing with that sparkler, lighting them, aiming them, two-handed, even, and firing them around the yard. That’s when I called it quits.

I won’t say what happened to Dennis, it’s not my place. What I will say is, forty-five Independence Days have passed before my eyes, and this one, that first bottle-rocket day, I remember best.

Go figure.

Spare Parts, my first story collection, is doing fairly well. More importantly, the support I’ve received has been overwhelming. It’s funny how you think you’re so alone in this thing…until you’re not.

Gonna take a mad run at the third, and, hopefully, final draft of this novel I can’t wait to put out into the world. Be safe, stay inside if you can help it, and if you imbibe, please, please, please, don’t drive.